I thought about Anna at twenty-two, pregnant with our first child while her friends were packing for internships and grad school. I thought about the nights she paced the living room with colicky babies while I slept because I “had meetings in the morning.” I thought about birthday parties she planned down to the smallest detail. The lunches she packed. The doctor appointments she remembered. The tiny sneakers she lined up by the door every night.
I thought about how easily I had reduced all of that to one word: just.
Anna came downstairs and stopped when she saw me at the table, the frame propped up in front of me.
“You opened it,” she said.
She didn’t sound angry.
She sounded tired.
“I’m sorry,” I said immediately. My voice didn’t feel steady. “I shouldn’t have said what I did. I was wrong.”
She didn’t answer right away. She walked over and ran her fingers across the signatures, lingering on familiar names.
“They didn’t forget me,” she murmured. “I thought maybe they had.”
